Dewey

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Waiting room reading. . .

They're everywhere! They're everywhere!

While in my doctor's waiting room today I read two articles that were really relevant to working on the 23 Things.

The following is another discussion of the essay in the reference that Jamie Watson sent out with the article "MySpace Is For Freaks, Facebook Is for Geeks?" on http://ypulse.com/archives/2007/06/myspace_is_for_1.php

Social Networking And Class Warfare.
Authors: Levy, Steven
Source: Newsweek; 8/6/2007, Vol. 150 Issue 6, p16-16, 4/5p
Abstract:
The article discusses the explanation forwarded by researcher Danah Boyd for why young people choose either Facebook or MySpace as their online social networking site of choice. Boyd's controversial conclusion was that college-bound kids from good families tend to choose Facebook, while self-identified outsiders and anti-establishment types prefer MySpace.



The other article presented a point of view on wikis that harmonizes somewhat with my concerns about "people-power."

Title: Down With Internet Democracy.
Authors: Keen, Andrew
Source: Forbes; 5/21/2007, Vol. 179 Issue 11, p38-38, 1p
Abstract: This article presents commentary on the plans of Wikipedia.com co-founder Jimmy Wales to launch a people powered, open source Wiki search engine. The author argues that volunteer software engineers will prove as unreliable and corruption prone as the volunteer editors of the online encyclopedia. The objective of making Internet search transparent and community-driven as opposed to the secret mathematical algorithms of Google is deemed noble but naive. Other controversial aspects are questioned.


The article ends, a little harshly, with this statement:
"Let's all grow up here. On the Internet, as in life, you get what you pay for. And I, for one, don't want the responses to my daily search requests determined by a horde of faceless volunteers."

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